HarlemLIVE

The Bank Street Book Store is located at West 112 Street and Broadway. It first opened in a small lobby in the Bank Street College, but about fifteen years later it reopened at 112 Street because they needed more space.

 Bank Street Bookstore has books mainly for infants to children thirteen years of age. The kinds of books that the typical thirteen year old reads are fantasy and realistic fiction. The genre that elementary school kids typically read are storybooks and animal books. Teachers also buy books for their classes and parents buy books for their children (sometimes even before they are born).  Bank Street Bookstore is very different from well known bookstores because they only focus on a certain topic. The topic that they focus on is learning books for the young and adults. The bookstore is a learning environment for school kids. The store’s bookkeepers keep track of sales using computers. They update the computers whenever new books come in and the publisher sells the book.

 Sometimes at the Bank Street Bookstore there are special events where authors come and read a story for the kids, which is called “story time.” It ranges up to about twenty kids. When a popular author comes to read a story to the kids, about twenty to sixty kids joins the story group. One of the most recent author that read a story to the kids was Mark Binder. He is the author of The Bedtime Story and It ate my sister. The stories are very entertaining for the kids. The Bank Street Bookstore is a warm friendly place where people in the neighborhood go to check out the local books many times a month. They are very familiar with the staff. Customers enjoy the feeling of being in a comfortable place.

 Business at Bank Street Bookstore is going pretty good, but a little tough because of the recession, says Sara 31, assistant manager of the store. She has been working there for five years. She enjoys working at the bookstore because she likes to help the customers out. If she had the opportunity to work at another bookstore such as Barnes and Noble, she would not work there because she has a lot of pride in being an independent small bookstore. She claims that it’s a “community bookstore”. The same customers come in and out every week, and she knows a lot of their faces. She also enjoys sitting with the kids during story time.

 So, if you want to visit a friendly neighborhood bookstore, check out Bank Street Bookstore. Every staff would help you pick out the right schoolbook for you or your child…